His bad-singing, bad-dancing Love's Labour's Lost suggests this is the end of the reign of King Ken

We come to bury Branagh, not to praise him. Sorry, wrong play and all, but as Kenneth Branagh turns 40 this year--and as he presents Love's Labour's Lost, his fourth Shakespeare film as star and director--it's time to wonder what happened to this Great Hope of the British Theatre, this jack-of-all-arts, this next Olivier. By his mid-20s Branagh had earned raves as Henry V at the Royal Shakespeare Company, staged and fronted an acclaimed Romeo and Juliet and starred in the miniseries Fortunes of War with his future wife Emma Thompson. It all seems so very long ago when a new...